Her hands on her stomach, Susan bent forward in her office chair, forced her head between her knees and willed the feeling to go away. All she could think of was that she’d never fainted in her life and she certainly had no time to pick up the habit now…

“Where’s Susan?”

There was no missing Julie Anderson’s voice, always sassily brusque and bubbling.

“In the office, I think,” Lanna responded absently.

Susan forced her head back up as she heard the staccato click of heels approaching. Rapidly pinching her cheeks, she swallowed back the desperate feeling of vertigo.

Her smile was all ready when a bottle of wine clattered down on her desktop along with a package of very good, but very strong cheese. Julie’s usual offerings. And just as always, Julie started talking the moment she came even vaguely within hearing range, tossing back her long blond hair and throwing herself onto the old green corduroy chair opposite Susan’s desk. “Business is absolutely terrible. Thank God I got the two of you together; otherwise Griff just might ask me to repay the money he lent me. As it is, what can he do? Without me, you and he would still be sitting on opposite sides of the city. I hope you two are happy, Susan, because I really don’t want to show him this month’s balance sheets- What on earth are you doing under the desk?” she interrupted herself abruptly. “Did you lose an earring? I swear, ever since I got my ears pierced, I’ve lost more earrings than I ever did the whole time-”

“Julie,” Susan said patiently, “would you remove the cheese?”

“Pardon?”

“Remove,” Susan repeated succinctly, “the cheese.”

“I thought you liked sharp cheddar-Susan? For heaven’s sake…” Julie’s chair scraped the linoleum as she vaulted out of it. Susan’s eyes were closed, her lips were whispering over and over, “You will not be sick, you will not be sick…” Julie hastily removed the strong-smelling cheese.

It helped. Susan’s stomach had been flip-flopping down a deep well, but it suddenly began to lose momentum, and she knew that in just one more minute she would be fine.

“Susan…” Julie’s hand touched her shoulder.

Lanna was suddenly standing in the doorway, with a look Susan had seen twice before in the past two weeks. “We’ll get you upstairs to my apartment,” she said firmly.

“There is nothing wrong with me,” Susan grumbled. “I didn’t eat any breakfast. I’ve known ever since I was six years old that I feel sick if I don’t have breakfast.”

“Susan…” Lanna started.

“Should I call a doctor?” Julie asked worriedly.

Susan promptly forced her spine straight, belted her arms tightly around her stomach and glared at both of them. “All I did was move a little too fast on an empty stomach. Let’s not make some kind of federal case out of it.”

“We won’t,” Lanna agreed. “You can just go to lunch with Julie. Immediately.” The two women exchanged glances.

“Exactly why I came here in the first place,” Julie announced.

Susan stood up then. Her knees felt skittery, but otherwise that green sensation had faded. The thing was, she reminded herself of her aunt. On her mother’s side. She’d had frequent exposure to her aunt’s hypochondria as a child, and it had caused her to develop an almost phobic loathing for illness.

“You’re not going to get a raise for the next eleven years,” she told Lanna.

“You gave me two last year. They’ll last for a while.” Lanna had her coat all ready.

Susan snatched it from her. “I’m fine. Please just leave me alone.”

The waspish tone was so out of character for Susan that both women smiled brilliantly at her. Julie didn’t stop the insane kid-gloves treatment until they were seated in a restaurant, eating homemade minestrone and wedges of warm French bread. Susan was keeping up with Julie spoonful for spoonful.

“You really were just hungry, weren’t you?” Julie conceded finally.

“I told you that.”

“You scared the devil out of your assistant.”

“Lanna’s desperate for someone to mother. She’s had the roles all wrong ever since I hired her, but I didn’t seem to realize it until the last few weeks.” Susan smiled with honest affection, feeling like herself again. “I’ve got to get her married off. She goes for the stray lambs every time. It wouldn’t be so bad if she collected children, but her strays are always over six feet tall with big blue eyes.”

Julie chuckled. Lanna’s doings always evoked her indulgent amusement. Her smile hovered a moment longer and then faded, and suddenly all her attention was riveted on the spoon in her hand. “I really did come to have lunch with you. To talk about the kids.”

“The kids?” Susan echoed in surprise.

“Come on, Susan. I’ve known my niece and my two nephews a long time. You think the problem wasn’t obvious to me when the clan came to dinner at my place last Sunday? My brother never used to be stupid.”

Susan, used to Julie’s sisterly concern for her, sighed. “Go ahead,” she said dryly. “But try to remember that I’m a big girl, Julie. The kids and I are doing just fine.”

Julie’s eyes met hers, big, blue and much more shrewd than her wine-and-cheese-shop profits would lead one to suspect. “They’re eating you up, Susan. Why haven’t you told Griff? Surely you know what Sheila’s like. She gave them nothing, so naturally, they saw you coming and held out their hands. It’s called taking advantage, darling.” She said the last two words very clearly, as if to emphasize the message to her sister-in-law.

Susan sighed and leaned back, absently regarding the busy comings and goings of the lunch crowd in the cheerful little restaurant. “Whether you can understand it or not, I happen to have a bad case of attachment to those three. I sometimes have a mad urge to glue little signs on their foreheads-Mine. And they’re not really giving me a hard time, Julie, not nearly as bad as I expected. Oh, Barbara sometimes goes a little too far. That I’ll admit. But then, she’s going through a period when she needs to test me.”

“As in every time Griff’s back is turned,” Julie interjected demurely. “She learned those tricks from a master, you must realize that.”

“Don’t,” Susan scolded bluntly. “Do you think this has been easy for Barbara? She must feel as if she’s turning her back on her mother to come and live with us-and Sheila isn’t an ogre, you know. I’m not her judge, and neither are you.”

“Don’t you forget that the judge didn’t just look into my brother’s winsome eyes and suddenly decide to give him custody. He talked plenty to those kids and to their mother. Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Sheila, Susan. Maybe this is her chance to get her life together. Finally. At any rate, those kids weren’t forced to live with you-they had their say. They must care for you. And as far as I’m concerned, that means you should have the right to slam them against a wall occasionally when they get really out of line.”

“You’ve always had this terrible problem expressing yourself,” Susan said with mock compassion. “You never speak your own mind, never come out and say what you’re thinking.”

Julie burst out laughing. “You’re the one who got me started-at least on this subject. Telling me about that book.”

“What book?”

“Tough Love. Wasn’t that the title? Something about kids testing you because they want you to set limits on their behavior, because it’s a natural human need to establish rules. Well, if that’s true, then you’ve got the right to say no to them, Susan. That won’t stop them from loving you.”

“So wise,” Susan marveled. “Remind me of this conversation if we ever get you married off and you have your own children, will you?” Susan gathered up her purse and coat and snatched the bill from the table. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got a thousand things to do this afternoon…”

Julie stood up reluctantly, casting Susan a rueful look as they made their way to the front of the restaurant. “Tell Griff the kids are bugging you,” she murmured as they walked outside.

“You were a perfect darling to invite me to lunch,” Susan said warmly. “Normally, I would have holed up in the back room with peanut butter and stale bread.”

“Tell Griff,” Julie repeated ominously.

“This has been a perfectly delightful conversation,” Susan assured her.

Julie didn’t usually admit that some mountains are just too high to climb, but this time she gave up on her sister-in-law, threw up her arms in defeat and climbed into her car.

Susan found a shop full of customers when she walked in the door, and had no time during the busy afternoon to mull over Julie’s lecture. Griff had been busy as hell the past three weeks; he couldn’t possibly see what was going on between her and the kids. If he did see, he seemed happy with the chaotic transition from honeymooners to a family of five. And essentially, the kids seemed just as happy. None of the arguments and resentments she had worried about had materialized.

She was the only one floundering. Was she the right kind of stepmother for them? She was not usurping Sheila’s role, not coming on too strong, not pushing any closeness before the kids wanted it… Oh, tough love had sounded good in principle. But Barbara seemed to need a full-time chauffeur, demanding that Susan drop whatever she was doing on the instant; yes, Susan could get tough and request a little consideration. She knew Barbara was using every excuse to test her, but that didn’t change Susan’s feeling that Barbara was having the hardest time in the transition and needed love and understanding. She would soon tire of a one-sided battle…wouldn’t she?

Tiger and the football that broke her grandmother’s vase…Susan could have yelled. It would be easy to yell at Tiger as she followed the urchin from room to room, picking up disasters, along with socks, shoes, school bags and crumbled cookies. But his own mother had never forced a single rule on him, and suddenly Susan was supposed to step in and play the heavy? The psychologists said it was all right to yell, as long as you directed your anger at the behavior rather than at the child-but would a divorce-torn ten-year-old really make the distinction? It probably hadn’t been all that long since Sheila had read him Grimm’s fairy tales, with all those wicked stepmothers…